Archives

Monday, May 16, 2005

PS3 photo and specs from E3

Here is the newly revealed PS3 straight from E3. Here are some specs and a photo!

* It will support Blu-ray (obviously), DVDÂ±R/W, CD-R/RW * Backwards compatible with the PlayStation 2 and original Playstation * One 3.2GHz Cell processorâtotal system performance rated at 2.18 teraflops (uh, thatâs actually about twice what Microsoft is claiming the Xbox 360 will do); it will have 256MB system RAM 3.2GHz, and 256MB GDDR VRAM at 700MHz * The nVidia graphics will be called the RSX (âReality Synthesizerâ), and will trump the Xbox 360 with 1080p (yes, thatâs a p) graphics support. * There will be a 2.5-inch hard drive (i.e. laptop hard drive) attachmentâa first for a Sony launch (no, we donât count the PSX and/or the FF add-on) * Memory Stick Duo slot, and very surprisingly, an SD and CF slots * Bluetooth support with up to seven wireless controllers * Six USB system ports

Apple updates their iPod lineup

Friday, February 11, 2005

Xbox 360 to be released in October/November?

There is news that the UK version of the Xbox 360 will be released sometime in October/November. The U.S version will be released a few weeks before the UK version. So we can hopefully expect the Xbox 360 in October or November (of this year, lol).

Monday, February 07, 2005

Details on the new Cell chip.

Engineers from Sony, IBM, and Toshiba revealed those and other specifications for the Cell processor during a press conference at the International Solid State Circuits Conference, where technical papers on the Cell design will be presented this week.

The three companies have been working on the Cell for several years, promising to deliver a high-performance chip optimized for multimedia applications. Test production of Cell chips is set to begin later this year, and the processors will appear later in workstation PCs optimized for animation and other graphics chores. The chip will also power the next version of Sony's PlayStation game console, which is widely expected to be released late this year or early next year.

While analysts and researchers have already puzzled out most of the basic aspects of the Cell design, Monday's announcements included some of the first specifics.

The Cell will have a 64-bit Power processor and eight "synergistic processing units" capable of handling separate computing tasks, said Jim Kahle, an IBM fellow. The multicore design will give software developers tremendous flexibility, Kahle said, allowing them to run multiple operating systems on the same chip and experiment with variations on grid computing.

"It's designed from the beginning to work in a world where all the computers are tied together," he said.

Future versions of Cell chips could have more or fewer processing units depending on what device and software designers require, Kahle said. "There are a number of different ways to implement parallelism on the chip," he said.

How those processing units are used is up to software developers, including the game makers who will soon start wrestling with the PlayStation 3. Kahle said IBM and its Cell partners will provide game developers and other code writers with open-source tools and guidelines for working with the Cell, but game developers will have the final say on how they chop up computing tasks among the processing units.

"It's really...up to the game developer," he said. "You can program it in many different ways."

Other Cell numbers include the following:

• The first version of the chip will run at speeds faster than 4GHz. Engineers were vague about how much faster, but reports from design partners say 4.6GHz is likely. By comparison, the fastest current Pentium PC processor tops out at 3.8GHz.

• The Cell can process 256 billion calculations per second (256 gigaflops), falling a wee bit short of marketing hyperbole calling it a "supercomputer on a chip." The slowest machine on the current list of the Top 500 supercomputers can do 851 gigaflops.

• The chip will have 2.5MB of on-chip memory and can shuttle data to and from off-chip memory at speeds up to 100 gigabytes per second, using XDR and FlexIO interface technology licensed from Rambus. "One of the key messages you hear from the architects of next-generation chips is that their performance is being limited by off-chip bandwidth," said Rich Warmke, product marketing manager at Rambus. "We've really licked that with Cell. 100GB per second is really unprecedented in the industry."

• The chip will have 234 million transistors, measure 221mm square, and be produced using advanced 90-nanometer chipmaking processes.

While the PlayStation 3 is likely to be the first mass-market product to use the Cell, the chip's designers have said the flexible architecture means the Cell will be useful for a wide range of applications, from servers to cell phones. Initial devices are unlikely to be any smaller than a game console, however--the first version of the Cell will run hot enough to require a cooling fan, Kahle said.

Some competitors, however, are skeptical about the Cell finding much of a home outside of video games. One of the big problems with the Cell, said Justin Rattner, an Intel fellow, is that the processing units aren't identical, a situation that increases complexity and the opportunity for bugs.

"You've got this asymmetry," Rattner said. "It's like having two kinds of motors under the hood. We are very reluctant to adopt architectures like this because they take compatibility and throw it out the window."

This sounds like a promissing processor for the upcoming PS3.
I can't wait to see what it will do with the new games.

PS3 rumored to be released in early 2006

According to BBC, the new PS3 will most likely not be released until early 2006 even thought they will be demoing their new console at the upcoming E3. The new console will feature the new Cell processor (see next post for details).

Disc format battle for new consoles.

Both Sony and Microsoft are differing in the format that they are using for their new consoles. Sony has said that they are using the new Blu-Ray format. While Microsoft has said that they are supporting the new HD-DVD format.

Friday, February 04, 2005

The next Xbox will be named the Xbox 360?

The word on the street is that the new Microsoft Xbox wil be called the Xbox 360. Until this is confirmed this is still just a rumor, but some sources have said that they have worked on the porject and seen the packaging and demos. The reason for this name change (the next Xbox was rumored to be called the Xbox 2 or Xbox Next) is that Microsoft felt that witha name such as Xbox 2, people might think it technologicaly inferior to the Playstation 3.

PSP to be released in March!

Sony's new PSP (Playstation Portable) will be released March 24, 2005 with a retail price of 249.99. The PSP wil come with a "value pack" that inclueds a 32mb memory stick, headphones (w/remote), battery pack, AC adaptor, soft case, cleaning cloth & UMD multimedia sampler. Sony also said that there will be about 24 games released at the same time.